Ayres Sequeira
As we Catholics are in the season of Lent, I just reminded myself that we come empty handed in this beautiful world and return with nothing. It’s our moral right to show some concern towards nature, which is God’s free gift to all of us. Our elected governments even went to the extent of passing legislative bills in support of destruction of nature. Let’s not be so greedy that our future generations, who are yet to see the light of this world, will curse us for our ugly deeds.
The elected government has always turned out to be worst enemy of our beloved Goa since liberation. They recently got together to destruct Goa’s ecological balance for all in the name of commencing mining claiming that mining ban will result in the miserable suffering of huge number of mining dependents. If the mining dependents are really starving to death due to the mining ban, the Supreme Court should lift the ban with immediate effect but how people wearing two kgs of gold on their body claim to be the sufferers?
Hope the present gang of elected legislators remember that Shah Commission had exposed mining ban worth thousand crores of rupees during the Digambar Kamat regime in Goa and the latter government headed by Manohar Parrikar promised to recover the loot. The ordinary Goans would have appreciated your same unity regarding the recovery of the mining loot but you elected leaders of the people just can’t do that because most of you in some way or the other are related to the mining scam.
I do understand and agree that there exist genuine mining dependents like the truck drivers, cleaners, people who bought a single truck just before the mining ban, etc; but does the people in power support the commencement of mining because of such dependents or to support the mining mafia who fund their election campaign?
Mining is not something that grows if cultivated. If mining is continued the way it was in the past, at one point there will be nothing called as mining! If the gang of elected legislators are really worried about the mining dependents, recover the loot with immediate effect and compensate the sufferers. Imagine Goa without environment lovers like Claude Alvares, Ramesh Gawas, etc?
When people lose faith in the law of the land, the only option remains is to pray to the God of the land and that’s what people have been doing and I join them. The prayers might not help to save the destruction of the environment but I have full faith that one day, some day the God of the land will destroy the destructors miserably. Let us pray.
